I have an interesting situation at present.
We’re in talks with a company regarding their web site marketing. One of the initial steps for us to to comprehensively review their web site using a range of tools, experience and expertise and providing detailed report with recommendations for improving the sites ‘findability’.
We generally charge for this initial report ($200 – $1,000 depending on how comprehensive it needs to be). We then move on to quote on completing the recommended changes.
And I charge for this report for a couple of reasons:
# 1: We know our stuff when it comes to search engine optimisation – we have skills, equipment, contacts, experience, etc that most others don’t. I don’t want to give away the benefit of all those and then have the client say “Nope, we’ll do it ourselves or get someone cheaper to do the actial search engine optimisation.”
The review takes anywhere from 1 to 10 hours work.
# 2: It qualifies the client a little for us – if the client isn’t prepared to pay for this comprehensive report then there is little chance they understand the importance and power of search engine optimisation.
This Latest Prospect Doesn’t Want To Pay
This latest prospect doesn’t want to pay for what he essentially sees as a quote. And it looks like being a deal breaker.
I’ve told the client if it’s an issue that we’ll deduct half of the fee from any ongoing work. But I’m not sure that will do it for him.
As sad as it is to lose a potential client I have to weigh up the long term issues – will this guy be a valuable client that we can do great work for and provide exceptional value?
Probably not. There are a few red flags for us to not take him as a client already and that’s always a good indicator.
In short, if the prospect came to me and said “I want A, B & C done. How much?” then that’s fine – no charge for the quote.
But because the prospect says “Can you tell me what I need to do to get my site in the top of the search engines?” then that’s consulting.
I’ll let you know what happens.
Brendon
Michael Schultz over at Raintoday.com sent me through some initial data from a survey where they asked 200 corporate decision makers who buy professional services how they like to find their service providers and then how they ultimately buy from them.
For example, regarding how websites affect the purchasing decisions of service purchasers:
* Roughly 80% of decision makers visit a service provider’s website before purchasing their services
* 69% are at least somewhat influenced by the website in deciding whether to initially contact a service provider
* 51% are at least somewhat influenced by the website in deciding whether to ultimately purchase from you
Raintoday sell the full report here.
Cheers
Brendon
Howdy. I’ve come to the realisation that I don’t use my error pages effectively. I’ve just quickly edited a page on our eczema web site to reflect better information.
We can make it a whole lot better than that of course, but with some time pressures at the moment I’ll just use it as an example.
Instead of saying “Page Not Found” why not add a little more information to direct the customer where you want them to go? It’s quick and easy to do.
Tip # 2:
On that error page if you look at the address bar you’ll see a little bottle of oil and cream. The favicon was created in Photoshop (click here for the plugin to do it with) and simply added top the root directory of the site as favicon.ico.
Cheers
Brendon
I was talking with a web developer yesterday who is soon to start business.
He wasn’t quite ready to start as he hadn’t got absolutely everything ready yet. He hadn’t organised a brochure as yet and he wanted to generate some publicity for his business as a kick off point (amongst other things).
I told him not to worry about that – just get out and start selling.
When I first started in web development I didn’t even have a web site for the first few years. And it didn’t matter one iota!
* Didn’t have a brochure (still don’t).
* Didn’t have a fax machine.
* Didn’t have a lot of things.
Don’t Wait Another Second
Don’t wait until everything is perfect before you start in business, or before you take your product to market for that matter.
Get out there and start selling and adjust as you go. Particualrly with products, there is a huge advantage to being first to market (and your customers will give you great feedback with which you can improve your product or service offering anyway).
Regards
Brendon
Here’s the things with blogs: I love them.
They are great for a whole range of reasons, one of those reasons being that they generate good search engine rankings.
But here’s what I’m noticing – a blog will stay at the top of a ranking for a keyword and then slowly drop off as time goes by.
So here’s a tip: convert blogs into articles and place them onto your site. Then delete that blog.
That way, I’m thinking, your should generate a better ranking for that article and it will stay more constant than a blog entry’s ranking.
Cheers
Brendon
We have 6 large jobs quoted on at the moment and another 8 smaller jobs quoted on.
If we get most of the jobs (my guess is we’ll get 10 out of the 14) we’ll have enough work to last our team the next 3 – 4 months. This work, along with our existing work (we manage quite a number of client sites) means we’ll be working our little butts off each and every day.
So then I’ll have some decisions to make – do I put on more staff or do we stop all of our marketing and not take on any new clients for a few weeks?
Based on my previous experience this is what can happen when we get super busy:
Our existing clients can suffer.
They can suffer because we’ll spend time and energy trying to attract new clients. We’ll spend more time on attracting these new clients than on looking after our old clients. Old clients who have supported our business for years, clients who refer their friends, clients who pay on time every time, clients who we like.
And that’s plain crazy.
So if we refuse extra clients it means we’ll be able to allocate more time to our existing clients. And they’ll get better service, be happier and refer us more clients.
Do We Put More Staff On?
The other issue is staff. To continue to attract clients and provide them with the quality of service we take pride in providing we’d need to put on new staff.
But that takes time. Finding the right person for the job is a time consuming process. Interviewing people is a time consuming job. Then training this new person is a time consuming job.
I’ve found the best time to put new staff on is when things are a little slower. That way we get the opportunity to educate and train the new team member in a more supportive environment and can allocate the appropriate resources for this very important job.
Hope that perspective helps you in your review of staffing needs.
Brendon
Hello
Probably the biggest hammering I’ve received online came from this web site here.
One of the fundamental points of difference between myself and the forum members was that some saw my marketing and sales message as sleazy and damaging to the industry.
My view at the time (and still is) was that web designers who design pretty sites that aren’t functional (like many designer do) are the ones damaging the industry. That suggestion soon got howled down.
The Perfect Example
Anyway, today I saw the perfect example of what I’m talking about.
I went in to chat with a web site owner about a site where I need to develop 30 pages of content for a web site. The content will be provided by the client from the notes he has handwritten.
I won’t go into all of the work we’d need to implement to meet the client’s objectives because of this next bit.
The client told me a competitor had already quoted and the quote was for $100. That’s $100 in total. For developing 30 pages of content for a web site from handwritten notes and optimising the entire site for search engines.
I Wouldn’t Do 1 Page For $100
I wouldn’t do 1 page for $100. I mentioned to the client that to have the 30 pages of work done for $100 was unreasonable, but he had an answer for that.
The other quote he’d received was for $150!
So he was thinking the $125 was around the mark.
The Way I See It
The way I see it is this: these people (they’re both students) quoting these low, low, low charges are damaging the industry.
Because what happens is this:
* The job doesn’t get finished
* The project fails
* The client becomes convinced the web doesn’t work for his business
* The client never gets his web site redone because of the very poor past experience
And then the entire web industry suffers because not as much web development work is being done and not as many jobs are available. And on goes the vicious cycle.
What do you think? Are people doing web work for crazy low prices hurting or helping the industy?
Regards
Brendon
I had a guy in yesterday to discuss his web site needs for the second time. I’d provide a verbal quote at our first meeting and at the end of this meeting the client said “Yep, all sounds good. Let’s get started.”
He pulled his cheque book out and said “It was $14,000 wasn’t it?”
I said, “No, I didn’t say $14,000 did I?”
He said, “Yes, pretty sure you did. That’s fine.”
It Was $4,000
I hadn’t said $14,000. I’d said $4,000.
I told him he must of misheard me – it was only $4,000. He was rather delighted with that!
Doing The Right Thing
Every now and then you’ll be faced with a situation like this. But if you keep in mind that you’re in business to meet the needs of your client and be an open, honest and ethical businessperson then it’s easy to make the right call and do the right thing.
I don’t know how people can sleep at night when they do the wrong thing.
Regards
Brendon
Howdy.
I’ve never really aggressively targeted Google Adsense with any of my sites – I’ve only ever put the ads on 2 sites just to get a feel for how they work (this site is the only site with ads now).
But what happens is I keep getting a sizable cheque from Google each month or 2.
So sizable in fact that I need to start looking at putting Adsense onto my main web site over at Tailored.com.au.
What do you think? Would it detract from my brand?
Appreciate any feedback to brendon@tailored.com.au.
Thanks
Brendon
Howdy
I recently completed redoing a site for a client (July, 2005) – the site was the usual kind of job we do. The site had been going for a year and hadn’t made any sales.
I got on well with the client and reinforced how effective the new site was going to be. I ended up saying “The new site will make 30 sales in the first 30 days or I’ll buy you a bottle of Jansz champage!”
I dropped in the champagne yesterday. The site had made 28 sales!
The client was thrilled to get the champagne (we’d been doing a countodwon for the last week) and we sat and had quite a chat.
It got me thinking at what an effective way it was to develop the relationship with the client – have some fun with them with a ‘silly’ sort of bet. It wouldn’t be the best strategy to use with a lot of clients but it was something different that kept me top of mind with this guy.
Can you do something similar?
Brendon